Virtualization

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Key points

Advantage Allows using software which has problems running directly with newer hardware and software.
Advantage Ability to use 16-bit software even if host machine is 64-bit without native support for 16-bit software.
Advantage Nullifies need to install another OS to system and separately boot into it.
Disadvantage Running virtualization of another OS inside OS is more tasking to system than directly running OS natively.
Disadvantage Especially 3D acceleration does have some problems so it's usefulness in gaming varies.

General information

More information Virtual machine at Wikipedia

Virtualization and Virtual Machines means emulating virtual machine (VM) and running other operating system (OS) inside it. System running in the VM is usually called host and OS running in virtual machine called guest. Usually this is done because software isn't working or requires something that's not included with newer hardware or software, best example being 16-bit software which doesn't run at all with 64-bit OS but does with 32-bit ones. Other good example running Windows game on Linux which doesn't work correctly with Wine.

With gaming some problems may arise. Emulating machine and OS takes up more resources than running just one OS natively. 3D accelerated games may also have problems as VMs aren't designed for gaming, so 3D acceleration support is generally poor.

When running older version of OS under VM same security risks apply than when installing that OS natively, so there will be possibility of viruses and malware taking advantage of guests vulnerabilities. If software in question doesn't need access to internet it's usually safer to disable it and when using shared folders it's safer to make it read only if you don't need to move files to host.

Applications[edit]

More information VBox vs Others - Oracle VM VirtualBox - Page comparing VirtualBox, Parallels and VMware features.
Software Platforms Wikipedia Homepage Cost
DOSBox Windows OS X Linux Link Free
VirtualBox Windows OS X Linux Link Free
VMware Windows OS X Linux Link Basic free
Premium costs
QEMU Linux Link Free
Windows Virtual PC Windows Link Free
Parallels Windows OS X Linux Link Costs

DOSBox[edit]

Information For more information see DOSBox.
Information It's possible to install early Windows versions with DOSBox (3.1, 95), however it's much more suitable for DOS gaming thus it's recommended to use other applications unless you have good reason to use DOSBox instead.

VirtualBox[edit]

Advantage Mostly open source and non-open source material is free for personal use.
Information Can be installed almost for every OS and can run vide variety of OS. However it does have problems with Windows ME and earlier which require some fiddling to work.
Information Guest Additions has to be installed to make guest work optimally, Direct3D support is experimental and installation requires additions to be installed in guests safe mode.

Installing games within guest[edit]

Fix Install from physical disk or disk image

  1. Start installed VM
  2. Once OS is fully loaded select Devices, CD/DVD Devices and either:
    • Host drive 'X:' for physical device and replace X with actual drive letter.
    • Choose a virtual virtual CD/DVD disk file... for disk image, either DMG, ISO or CDR file.
  3. When loaded, disk can be accessed from guest OS normally.

Fix Use shared folder to move install file to guest

  1. Open VMs Settings and open Shared folders
  2. Click on icon with blue folder and green plus sign to add new folder.
  3. Search folder you want to use within guest, name it, tick auto-mount and click OK.
    • If you are only using shared folder to install game tick read only.
  4. Click OK to save changes and start up VM.

Notes

Information Guest additions should be installed prior doing this.
Information If you add shared folder while VM is open you may need to restart guest.

Microsoft Virtual PC 2007[edit]

Information Installing on Windows 8 and later requires some tweaking (see Windows 8 compatibility issues).

Windows 8 compatibility issues[edit]

Disadvantage Virtual PC 2007 causes a BSOD on Windows 8 and later because it uses an outdated version of vmm.sys.

Fix 

  1. Install Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 if you haven't already.
  2. Install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.
  3. Install the Windows Phone SDK 7.1.1 Update.
  4. Rename Virtual PC.exe to VirtualPC.exe to bypass the compatibility warning.
  5. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 SP1 will now run correctly on Windows 8.
Information The updated vmm.sys can be backed up for future use to avoid having to install the Windows Phone SDK in the future.

External links[edit]

More information quickhakker - Program Tutorial: Running 16 bit programs on 64 bit operating systems - YouTube